Grading Strategy

A workshop assignment is quite flexible in the type of grading scheme used. This can be:

No grading: In this type of assignment the teacher is not
interested in quantitative assessment from the students at all. The students
make comments of the pieces of works but not grade them. The teacher,
however, can, if desired, grade the student comments. These
"grading grades" form the basis of the students' final grades.
If the teacher does not grade the student assessments then the assignment
does not have any final grades.

Accumulative grading: This is the default type of grading.
In this type of assignment the grade of each
assessment is made up of a number of "assessment elements".
Each element should cover
a particular aspect of the assignment. Typically an assignment will have
something between 5 to 15 elements for comments and grading, the
actual number depending on the size and complexity of the assignment. A peer
assignment with only one element is allowed and has a similar assessment
strategy to the standard Moodle Assignment.

Elements have the following three features:

The DESCRIPTION of the assessment element. This should clearly state what
aspect of the assignment is being assessed. If the assessment is qualitative
it is helpful to give details of what is considered excellent, average
and poor.

The SCALE of the assessment element. There are a number of predefined
scales. These range from simple Yes/No scales, through multipoint scales to
a full percentage scale. Each element has its own scale which should be chosen
to fit the number of possible variations for that element. Note that the scale
does NOT determine the element's importance when calculating the overall
grade, a two point scale has the same "influence" as a 100 point
scale if the respective elements have the same weight...

The WEIGHT of the assessment element. By default the elements are given the same
importance when calculating the overall grade of the assignment. This can be
changed by giving the more importance elements a weight greater than one, and
the less important elements a weight below one. Changing the weights does NOT
effect the maximum grade, that value is fixed by the Maximum Grade parameter
of the peer assignment. Weights can be assigned negative values, this is an
experimental feature.

Error Banded Grading: In this type of assignment the submissions are
graded on a set of Yes/No scales. The grade is determined by the "Grade
Table " which gives the relationship between the number of
"errors" and the suggested grade. For example an assignment may have six
significant items which should be present, the Grade Table will give suggested
grades if all are present, one is absent, if two are absent, etc. The individual
items can, if desired, be given weighting factors if some items are more important
than others. The number of "errors" is a weighted sum of the items not
present. By default each item is given a weight of one. The grading table is likely
to be non-linear, for example
the suggested grades may be 90%, 70%, 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10%, 0%, 0%, 0% for
an assignment with 10 items.The assessor can adjust the suggested grade by up
to 20% either way to give the submission's final grade.

Criteria Grading: This is the simplest type of assessment to grade (although
not necessarily the most straightforward to set up). The submissions are
graded against a set of criteria statements. The assessor chooses which statement
best fits the piece of work. The grade is determined by a "Criteria
Table" which gives the suggested grade for each criterion. For example
an assignment may be set up with, say, five criteria statements and the assessors
must then choose one of the five statements for each of their assessments. As with
the Banded assignment the assessor can adjust the suggested grade by up to
20% to give the final grade.

Rubric This is a similar to Criterion Grading except there are multiple
sets of criteria. Each set covering a particular "Category", can have
up to five statements. The sets are given individual
weights and the grade is a weighted combination of the scores from each set. There
is no adjustment option in this assessment type.